RE: More Advantages - The Portable Document Format (PDF)

[Louis Paley <paley.louis@epa.gov>]

I work in the Enforcement and Compliance Office of EPA, and ALL OF
EPA has converted several thousands of its current and historical
policy and guidance documents from paper copy to PDF files.  This
format was largely recommended because it is the only format which
ensures four things:

  1)  the copy you receive AND print out on your end, regardless
      of hardware or software, will be IDENTICAL to the original,
      including the date, signature, and any marginal comments;

  2)  everyone of these documents are totally searchable with
      EPA's search engine because we chose to use the "graphics
      plus hidden text" option of PDF;

  3)  PDF files are compressed files, so downloading is faster,
      and storage takes fewer resources; and

  4)  EPA has a policy against putting the primary copy of a
      document on the web in a format which requires the public to
      purchase specific software; thus, we are not supposed to
      upload WordPerfect or Word documents unless we also have
      provided a file in HTML, PDF or text.

These (policy and guidance) documents will be made available starting
with the 1999 and 2000 ones in October, 2000.

We were aware, and took into account that the public would have to
one-time download the free Adobe reader, and would have to learn
how to use it.